For most nations, a visit from China’s head of state is not a casual affair. It is a signal. A symbol. A strategic calculation. Between 1998 and 2020, China’s top leaders—presidents and premiers alike—boarded state planes over 400 times, carrying with them more than protocol. They carried intention. Charting those visits, as researchers Yu Wang and Randall W. Stone have done in a newly assembled dataset, is like reading the pulse of Beijing’s foreign policy. And it offers hints at what China really wants and where its long-term aims lie.

From Jiang Zemin’s cautious steps to Xi Jinping’s globe-spanning ambitions, Chinese diplomacy has become more frequent and carefully orchestrated. Between 2013 and 2020, Xi Jinping alone made 43 overseas trips as president, visiting countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. He positioned himself as the face of a more assertive, outward-looking China. But what does the data reveal about Beijing’s true priorities?

Russia sits comfortably at the top. This comes hardly as a surprise: China’s alliance with Russia has deepened in recent years, marked by shared strategic interests and growing alignment against Western influence. While not a formal military pact, the partnership is built on economic cooperation, diplomatic coordination, and joint military exercises. Especially since 2014, and more visibly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing has positioned itself as Moscow’s key partner, even as it tries to present itself as a neutral actor or mediator in the conflict. Following Russia, the most visited countries include Germany, the UK, Belgium, South Korea, and Kazakhstan. They all confirm a clear pattern: nations with high GDP, strong trade ties, or geopolitical significance tend to attract more diplomatic attention. Germany stands out as Europe’s economic powerhouse and a source of advanced technology. Belgium hosts key institutions of the European Union. And Kazakhstan, positioned at the heart of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative launched in 2014, plays a central role in China’s strategic outreach.

• Russia wins gold in the visit Olympics. Maybe China's support of the war against Ukraine wasn't such a surprise.
• If your GDP is big, your airport gets busy.
• Being neighbors gets you visits. It also gets you surveillance balloons, trade deals and the occasional military drill.

And then, there is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. A regional forum often overlooked in the West, the SCO becomes, in this data, a stage for symbolic engagement.

In most years, China visited nearly all summit’s host country. But not all, as you discover looking at the data. Russia, though central to the organization, is pointedly skipped at times. The most likely reason that ever other year China's leadership was visiting its neighour, SCO summit or not. Through crisis and wars China never changed that habit.